


Angst Notes

by Satan (THEfanofstuff)



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - no happy ending, Angst, Character Study, Depression, Game: Kingdom Hearts III, Gen, Heavy Angst, No actual relationships - Freeform, Not even a story, One-Sided Attraction, Post-Kingdom Hearts III, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Realistic, Sad Ending, Spoilers - Kingdom Hearts III, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, literally just notes, no happy ending, seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 14:23:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17868938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/THEfanofstuff/pseuds/Satan
Summary: Look. Spoilers, because this is based on/an alternate to kh3's ending. It's just notes I've taken, of how I thought it would pan out realistically, based on the characters' reactions during the game. Sora was just broken by the end, ok, like wtf. They did him dirty. I mean, I'm about to fuck him up too, but still.This is written with Riku's feelings for Sora being romantic, not platonic, but based off of kh3, Sora doesn't return them, at least not to the same extent. I wasn't a fan of Kairi being a love interest, especially when they could have done so much more, so Sokai isn't happening either. Just warning you now....I might have gone a bit overboard with the angst. I was just really not chill with the "no consequences" ending.





	Angst Notes

**Author's Note:**

> Forgot to add this in the summary so, just so you know, in this alternative, it's largely based around the assumption that the group of keyblade wielders survived and went to live, if only temporarily, in Master Yen Sid's tower, because that thing is magic and is an easy excuse to have them all live together/in close proximity to each other.

Team Ventus

Ventus has troubles falling asleep unless both of the other two are near(or when it's quiet, in general). He doesn't want to sleep and lose another large chunk of time, he spent way too long in his own version of darkness, even though it was only really the back of his own eyelids.

Aqua struggles between her feelings for Terra and his inevitable descent into darkness, and find she can’t trust him, doesn’t leave him alone with Ven or any of the younger keyblade wielders. She struggles with Ven's need for them both to be there when he sleeps, at least at first. She couldn't trust Terra alone with them as they slept.

Terra has issues with nightmares, and can’t look Riku in the eyes. He failed where a young boy, much younger than he was, succeeded. He can’t pick up a keyblade again, nor can he attend his friends’ practices. He does, however, teach technique, safe away in a classroom that Master Yen Sid provided. 

  
  
  


Team Roxas

Roxas has reservations about Ventus, despite his initial lack of fucking tIME to worry about it bc surprise surprise, the world was ending. He doesn’t like that he and Roxas look the same and that sometimes Aqua or Terra will look his way and wince, or treat him as they do Ventus, or even mistake him for Ventus. He doesn’t say anything, most times, because he gets it. He was ripped from Axel and Xion violently as well, though their roles don’t translate as well.

Speaking of his friends, he still feels weird about Xion, too. He barely remembers her, and yet he’s so attached to her that it scares him.

Roxas is so glad to have Hayner, Pence, and Olette back again, but they don’t remember him. Despite their best efforts, they sometimes forget he exists. He is often excluded from their jokes or makes inside jokes he had with his versions, only for them to look at him like he’s insane. They don’t remember him, and while they try, that connection runs weaker every day.

 

Axel is, in short, fucked up. He lost his best friend twice, the second time as he died in his arms. Sure, they eventually found Isa, and he was glad to have his friend back, but now they argued. All the time. Xion is still afraid of Isa(though he’s not LIKE Saix) and Axel/Lea has issues going between them. Isa is still extremely jealous, though he tries to temper and hide it, and ends up spending more time with Riku than normal. Axel doesn’t even have his keyblade anymore, and though he’s working on replacing it, he almost prefers his chakrams. 

Axel can’t really sleep without Roxas near, and often he wakes up sobbing or screaming apologies, while Roxas feels like he should be the one apologizing. 

 

Xion is afraid of most of the people on the team. She’s afraid of Ansem, and Isa. She’s afraid of Even and Ienzo. Xion is even a little afraid of Roxas and Axel/Lea, though it’s mostly because of what they’ve done. She has forgiven them already but has issues showing it, or believing she belongs at all, so she doesn't initiate contact. She isn’t afraid of Sora or Namine and often is calmer in Kairi’s presence. 

 

Isa doesn’t fit in. He gets along fine with the King and Master Yen Sid, and has respect for the other two “half pints” but does not know what to do with Sora, and Riku is suspicious of anyone touched by the darkness. He allows Isa to hang around him, thinking him on the same side as Axel, but doesn't like it when he nears Sora. Kairi is kind enough but isn’t the sort he hangs out with, so a large portion of his time is spent in the lab with Ienzo and Ansem the Wise. He doesn’t like fighting and doesn’t want to hurt anyone, so he develops enough of an eating problem that it keeps him weak, unable to take complete power, even when he feels the full moon thrumming through his veins. He often disappears during those few days, just in case. 

  
  
  


Team Sora

  
  


Riku knew that Sora didn’t feel the same way he did, he never had. Jealousy had driven him to darkness, and the extent of his feelings was so much deeper than those of Sora’s for him. Nobody bothered denying it, and often the pitying glances were too much to take. He spent over two years caring for and looking after Sora, to help guide him. He knew he hadn’t been worthy of Sora’s light. He had accepted that as a fact, and even when Sora surprisingly took him back with open arms, it was at a distance. The mark of mastery exam had been the one time he felt like Sora felt the same way, yet any and all of those hopes were dashed upon waking. A tea party. Sora had a tea party. And then his obvious obsession with Kairi throughout his (third) training, which was unfortunately relayed to him via late night gummi phone calls. Even when she had gone missing, he knew. He was no longer relevant. That didn’t stop him from caring, of course. He cared so. Damn. Much about the stupid brunette. But it was all for naught, and Riku had accepted that because he didn’t deserve better. He still used dark magic. He still used it to enhance his speed, to block attacks. Without it he may as well have been Sora, first starting out, not knowing anything beyond how to swing wildly with the keyblade. 

Riku didn’t trust Aqua, Terra, or Isa. He trusted Isa marginally more than the other two, mainly because he had been a nobody, not lost to the power of darkness. But he couldn’t help sitting in on every lesson the two older keyblade masters gave and making sure they didn’t lose control or hurt anybody. It helped that Terra’s lessons were never on actual fighting, it was always on the theory, or legend, or technique. 

Riku was constantly obsessed with making sure Sora and Kairi were still there, though. The first week back, he would sit outside Sora’s door, making damn well sure nobody came near him. Kairi had Axel, and Riku trusted Axel, despite all odds. Axel was gay, for one. For two, he had trained alone with her for however many months it took before that final battle, and he had seen firsthand how protective Axel had gotten. But nobody got that way around Sora except perhaps the other two half-pints, and they were preoccupied with the king, so Riku was going to damn well do it. And he did, until Sora caught him in the early morning hours about two weeks in. Sora insisted it was fine, even invited him inside to sleep, but Riku avoided Sora’s room like the plague after that. He couldn’t afford to do things like that if Sora knew. 

Riku never slept at night. His schedule was odd, always sleeping in the early morning after the sun had risen, or in the late hours of the afternoon when Master Yen Sid was watching the magic lessons so he didn’t have to shadow Sora. He slept when he could, when there wasn’t darkness because it was the daytime, so he couldn’t be in the realm of darkness. 

  
  


Kairi hated her role. She hated that she was supposed to be a love interest, that all she had done in the end was get herself kidnapped,  _ again. _ She loved Sora, and she cared for him deeply, but she didn’t actually want to be in a relationship with him. Not after what they’d been through. She knew he would continue on insisting he ‘rescue’ her, even when it wasn’t necessary, so she avoided him, and felt intensely guilty about it. She didn’t want to be coddled, so she worked on moving on. At times, it felt selfish, but she thought she had deserved the right to be selfish at this point. And she knew what she felt for Sora would never compare to what Riku felt, even if his feelings were all-consuming and somewhat toxic. He acknowledged that, and so she spent some of her time getting to know him for a second time. 

She spent a lot of her time with Axel, and thus with Roxas and Xion. The three of them are clingy, but they accepted her into their little group with relative ease. She also spent a lot of time with Namine, who didn’t really know what to do with herself. She didn’t know anyone besides Kairi, and so she, Kairi and Xion soon started hanging out together, to offset the constant  _ fightguiltpain _ that went on with many of the other occupants of the world. 

She didn’t know how to act around other, normal people. She had spent more time than most with them, and yet they didn’t make sense to her. They were so far away from each other, all the time, and so maybe Riku wasn’t the only one with dependency issues. She talked about this with Roxas, and they spent time with Hayner, Pence, and Olette, and it seemed better. Nothing was fixed or healed, but nothing was broken. Everything was fine(most of the time. Sometimes Roxas would disappear and they’d find him at the steps to the station, or at the top of the tower, and he didn’t seem to understand that stepping off meant death, not really, but he never did anyway, simply because they asked him not to. All was fine, but it wasn’t, not really. 

 

Sora was slightly broken. Life hadn’t worked out, and he saw ghosts around the corner constantly. Old organization members who were never found after their nobodies disappeared. Xehanort himself. He had nightmares, classic ones, ones with his friends dying and everyone freezing so he had to fight Xehanort alone. Xehanort winning. Worlds screaming, the predicted purge upon them. Often times, he couldn’t even bring himself to leave his room after them because he thought he heard breathing in the hallway. Until that breathing turned out to be Riku, and the sudden silence in the following weeks was even scarier and more painful. 

He had gotten desperate, just wanting his fairytale ending with Kairi, and had been obsessed with her, but the final battle was over and it seemed he couldn’t go home, not really. He was physically in the tower, but in his mind, he had to keep Kairi close and safe, and it wasn’t fair to her. It didn’t mean it didn’t sting when she rejected him, his love for his friend for once being stronger than hers for him(so he thought; he had trouble distinguishing between the types of love he had seen and felt, and hers was just as strong but different in some fundamental way that he didn’t understand). He didn’t understand Riku either; he knew that he had been going after Kairi, disregarding Riku even in the face of his other friends, but to be honest, Riku made him sad. Sora had  _ done it, _ Sora had  _ saved him _ like he was trying to do with Kairi, had done with Kairi, and now Riku was safe and protected on the side of the light, secure. But Riku gave him these looks sometimes as if he had lost everything, or when Sora found him  _ outside his door wtf _ and Riku had avoided him for four days straight while still watching from afar, as if he was afraid Sora was going to break now like he had done when their friends were lost. 

Sora spent most of his time in the 100-acre woods, staying where hypothetically, the others couldn’t reach him. He talked to the animals there, describing what he could without giving away world order, but it was no use. They couldn't grasp the concept of battle, of death. They didn’t understand darkness, and they didn’t know what to do when Sora had a panic attack. So he mostly stayed because it was quiet and solitary.  

Sometimes he gets angry. He can’t really control it, and everyone avoids him except Riku, Isa, and Axel. Some of the other keyblade wielders don’t really mind, like Aqua and Roxas, who had dealt with it himself, but they preferred to keep the others, who were afraid, away and safe. Originally, he would spend his time trying to kill the ghosts, oftentimes wrecking the kitchen or wherever he was, but he could never hit them. His hits would go right through, or they’d move at the last second. Isa tried dueling him once while he was like this, but the other two had to intervene when Sora couldn’t remember that he didn’t want or need to kill him. From then on, it was mostly Axel/Lea facing off against him, which Roxas didn’t like, with Riku sometimes stepping in. He wouldn’t do much, however, mostly remaining on the defensive, which calmed Sora on some days and aggravated him on others. 

On his calm(sane) days, Sora spent time with Xion and Namine, getting to know them, and discussing books that they found and took turns reading in the tower library. At one point, he took them to go see Cloud and Leon, with Roxas and Kairi coming along(because they didn’t trust him not to snap). He did end up getting stir-crazy, agitated, slightly unreasonable(he fucking broke ok because Yuffie had gone down in a fight with the darkness and had yet to get back up again), and all it took was a look between Cloud and Leon before they took him outside and fought him together until he calmed down, finally beaten for once in a long while( _ a battle he could afford to lose, he was fine and so were everyone else, he didn’t need to fight to survive _ ). They sat him down and explained the intricacies of ‘soldier’s heart’, of what he had gone through. They explained how it affected him even though it wasn’t his fault, and that he needed to accommodate for that because even if he didn’t mean to, he could and would hurt his friends. He might not have been prone to darkness before, but now he’s much more vulnerable, and he needs to watch himself. He relays this to Riku, the first deep conversation they’ve had in weeks, and Sora is terrified halfway through because he feels  _ animosity  _ towards Riku, of all people. He feels cold. Riku knows there’s more wrong than that but agrees to watch him, not pressuring him, not having the right to anymore. He’s not Sora’s best friend anymore, because it isn’t really Sora anymore. 

 

Donald and Goofy spend a large majority of their time with the King, patching up and caring for a kingdom, court, and guard that have been without leadership for years on end. They don’t really expect it, don’t see Sora become his shadow form that they saw so many times in battle, don’t expect him to lose his light. They should have known, they murmur, they saw him at the end of the Mark of Mastery exam before Riku woke up. They knew he had been hiding that from Riku. The saw how desperately he looked for and at Kairi in the last battle, the last world. But they hadn’t seen even more. They hadn’t seen him give up when Riku was still there, Riku who they watched Sora chase for over two years, Riku, who they knew would protect him with his dying breath, Riku who they honestly expected Sora to be in love with. But they returned a month and a half, two months later to find Sora, partially broken and still chipping away, and Riku, helpless to do much at all besides watch over him and care for him. Only Sora could stem that ache, that bleeding, and he didn’t know it, nor did he know how. 

They convinced the King to contact Cloud, who agreed to come over, alarmed that Sora was getting worse, not better. Things were worse than he thought when he got there. Sora wasn’t the only one with a soldier’s heart, and they were all coping differently. Thankfully, it seemed as if Sora was the only one not adjusting.

**Author's Note:**

> These may be stupid, idk. If anyone wants to take them and make something, or add more, just comment and let me know. I probably won't be adding any more myself unless I replay the game. I'm sorry for not having Sora in a relationship, it really just didn't seem feasible to me.


End file.
